ULF SAUPE

ABOUT THE ARTIST

WORKS

ABOUT THE ARTIST

INTRODUCTION

The High Art of the Photogram The photogram is indeed an old photographic technique known for being cameraless. All the same, who will deny that it can’t be developed further? But how? Tackling this are the photograms of Ulf Saupe, who, at a young age, self-confidently followed in the footsteps of his university teacher Floris M. Neusüss with prolific success. After high school, civil service and a short intermezzo of German and Anglo literature studies, he arrived at the Gesamthochschule via the Kunsthochschule Kassel. He studied visual communications before he changed to fine arts in order to enter studies with Floris M. Neusüss. As is seen, he quickly opened himself up to the possibilities of the photogram and independently expanded them. Certain influences of the Kassel School, as one could call them, can’t be ignored, especially in the corporal pictures in which people come into direct contact with the photo paper. At the same time the concentration on intense colors is striking, creating a clear distance from the black-and-white his teacher exhausted in rich variety. But Ulf Saupe goes further, with resolve, and pushes the spontaneous. Coincidence generally plays a considerable role in the photogram because certain results don’t let themselves be repeated. The definitive parameters for the pictures’ execution - the location of the objects, the guidance of light, etc. - can’t always be called up with the same results. The photogram is a procedure that can’t be replicated. With Fresh Appeal Ulf Saupe expounds these indeterminable parameters and makes playing with the unpredictable path the goal. Instead of building processes focused on maintaining utmost control and steering capability, he commits himself to the full risk of failure that this fully intuitively applied work presents. The completely dark room in which he finds himself with the light-sensitive paper offers enough uncertain terms by itself, but he intensifies the uncertainty by also working with varying light sources. Included in this are the fluorescent beams of phosphor that he discovered as new light sources for the photography. Of the most varied sources are supplements with light that are electrically generated and in part filter controlled. In addition to these, he uses a Laser pointer with which he partially draws on the paper. It should be noted that to Ulf Saupe, the concept of painting with light is not far off. Altogether between 10 and 30 single exposures are gradually added up and at the end have to harmonize with the sensitivity of the photo paper. That makes determining the necessary total exposure time for the photo paper utterly incalculable. Therefore automation runs its course, and the artist can,only with difficulty, assert a controlled influence. What remains is the intuition and the experience won from numerous attempts that makes the photogram at least a half-way calculable process. In this respect, he plays with the chance that is inherent in the entire work process. But as the motif-like and above all fascinating results with color show, the “luck of the capable” is on his side. High Voltage In the series plusminus, which came about in connection with the Alstom high-voltage engineering company in Kassel, Saupe worked out his theoretical thoughts on electricity, which he conceives as omnipresent. Just like electricity is only visible in results, so he understands his work with the photograms. The single works’ steps only reveal their effects at the end, when they’re recognizable on the developed photo paper. In an allusion to the physics of electricity, he brought the phenomenon of light, with the positive pole, in connection to objects with a negative pole. As a result, light and objects intermix in the pictures. His theoretical-philosophical notions momentarily circle around the phenomenon of the „black sun,“ the interplay of darkness (comparable with his activities in the absolute darkness of his work room) and the rebirth of light (comparable with the lighting of the pictures he produced through short flashes). Whether, and how, these thoughts will be reflected in future photograms remains to be seen. A good future is to be expected. Dr. Enno Kaufhold